I’m pretty sure all the Witness puzzle solutions are checked directly from the rules by computer solver. Blow didn’t determine the solutions by hand and hardcode them in, so there can’t be any inconsistencies of this nature.
I kind of agree with the validity of your frustration in a more general sense, though. I’d rephrase the criticism to say that the rules are very finicky and subtle, especially in combination with each other. It takes a while to even realize that the game actually expects you to learn and rely on some very fine details indeed.
More generally speaking, the training is solid, but there is a level of “meta-training” or expectations-setting that is lacking. As another example, I’ve noticed many people seem to quit the game forever after 15 minutes of being frustrated at the first black/white circle puzzle you encounter, which as I understand it is intended to train you that some puzzles should be skipped because you don’t know their rule yet.
Alan Wake is to be played for an episode a day because playing longer than that you really get sick of how thin the actual gameplay is. Still neat, even though Episode 3 was closer to 2 hours than E1-2’s 45. E4 was also about 45.
Then Blair Witch has the most realistic forests I’ve ever seen in a video game. Give me VR and no ghosts and just walking through these good woods with my very good dog friend. The dog and woods are very good. Xbox Game Pass PC allows you to try this experience for the lower price of 1 dollar.
edit: didn’t put together this is the observer/layers of fear folks. That would be why it looks so incredible.
i think the older ones are more conducive to soloing, actually. i played hella earth defence force and monster attack on PS2 solo, and it was a riot. the framerate crashes really add to the spice imo
I’m not sure if you were confirming or denying the existence of puzzles with multiple solutions accepting only one, but also others accepting multiple. But I just came across both types in the tree house. Puzzles with multiple solutions only accepting one. And puzzles with multiple solutions accepting multiple solutions.
Pretty frustrating, as you never know when you are fighting a single solution.
I’m denying that this exists. Whenever I thought I ran into this, I figured out later it was an edge case in the rules where my interpretation disagrees with the solver. If it’s really a valid solution, the game will accept it, even if Blow never anticipated it during development.
Every puzzle game is a little bit frustrating, but that’s one of the points of the experience. I love especially how after you do finally break through a wall of misunderstanding, The Witness releases tension and rewards you with a ton of newly-easy-ish puzzles, like Sonic blasting out of a spinball.
I finished I guess about 3/4 of every puzzle in the Witness, and just when I started to finalize things on top of the island, got heavily into other titles and never went back.
I enjoyed chilling in that abstract battering ram, but would have to clear a lot of deck space to even consider returning…starting over would be a must.
played a little more nier 1. just got to the seaside town, which is one of the most gorgeous videogame environments i’ve ever seen. it’s completely unfathomable that this game was criticized for its visuals.
i’m still unsure about certain (mostly writing-related) elements so far, but reserving judgment until the overall structure of the game coheres. i already vastly prefer it to automata, which i found both a little too smooth and accommodating mechanically and design-wise and kind of moist in its extended deployment of woman pain/“sad stories.” it’s gratifying that nier 1 retains some drakengard chunk and jank.
i also love that drakengard 1 came out on 9/11 in 2003 and that the nier 1 protag’s birthday is also 9/11. very subtle.
It’s a comedy about being a foreign adventurer in a cruel environment where intense caution and accumulation of resources still doesn’t prevent a slapstick death the instant you make a small oversight. The randomization makes it so that you can’t overcome this with foreknowledge of where everything is.
Although it inaugurated the action roguelike genre, it still stands alone because most of its successors also aimed at fairness or power fantasy. Spelunky is the only one that leaves you desperately vulnerable the entire time.
Ape Out was cool and glad I played it but trying to assign a price to it breaks me. It was on Game Pass is creative and fun and cool. But trying to justify a burrito price to it stops my tongue.
the stuff they’re doing with the dynamic composition is genuinely cool but very very difficult to get non-polymaths excited about (“I really enjoyed the Arcade-difficult gorilla escape videogame for its pioneering use of procedural free jazz” is a pretty niche sentiment even among Bennett’s twitter followers), as a game I enjoyed teleglitch about a million times more and that didn’t have the same people talking it up